INQUA NETHERLANDS is the Netherlands' national representation in INQUA, the International Union for Quaternary Research.

Upcoming activities

The Quaternary Period in Earth History

The Quaternary Period spans the last 2.6 million years of the Earth's history. It is an interval with dramatic and frequent changes in global climate. Warm interglacials alternated with cold ice ages. The Quaternary saw the global landscape develop into the modern situation. It saw man evolve, become civilised and grow to be a siginificant factor affecting System Earth.

The broad range of intertwined Quaternary topics spans Global Change, Extinction, Landscape Change, Biodiversity, Greenhouse Warming, Sea level rise, Natural Disasters, Environmental Hazards and Cheese Making. Quaternary Science is a multi-disciplinary effort involving many disciplines such as Geology, Physical Geography, Climatology, Oceanography, Biology, Archeology and Ecology. Quaternary palaeoclimatic investigations play a key role in the understanding of the possible future climate change on our planet.

The Quaternary and the Netherlands

The Netherlands lays on the southern rim of the North Sea Basin, and has been a depocentre of fluvial, shallow marine and glacial sediments during the Cenozoic, including the Quaternary. Quaternary deposits forms the substrate on which the Dutch founded their cities, dug their canals through, build their dykes on and mined their peat, clay and gravel from. Quaternary Geology hence has a long history in the Netherlands, from applied and academic perspectives.

The relatively complete stratigraphy, the interfingering marine and terrestial formations throughout the Quaternary, its presence at the margin of the largest Scandinavian glaciations and pioneering activities of the National Geological Survey in the 1960ies and 1970ies, make the Netherlands host the type localities for many internationally used chronostratigraphical subdivisions of the Quaternary. This includes terms such as: Reuverian and Tiglian at the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary, the Drenthe substage marking maximum glaciation in the Saalian, the Eemian being the last interglacial and the Hengelo interstadial as a less cold episode within the Last Glacial.

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

Past activities

2009 SPRING SYMPOSIUM | 14 April, KNAW Trippenhuis, Amsterdam About 120 participants enjoyed talks by 6 speakers. The meeting linked Archeology and Quaternary Geology. A photo impression is found here. Dedicated page: Late Quaternary Climate Change: a Human Perspective

2008 SPRING GATHERING | 9th Nederlands Aardwetenschappelijk Congres, Veldhoven The biannual Netherlands' national Earth Science Congress was held at its traditional location, 18-19 march 2008.

Cairns 2007 XXVII INQUA Congress About 20 Dutch delegates participates in the XXVII INQUA congress in Cairns, Australia in july/august 2007.

2007 SPRING GATHERING Symposium to preview presentations in preparation of the Cairns INQUA congress. The event took place at TNO B&O, Utrecht, on 13th April 2007, 13:30-17:00

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